


The Greatest Of These Is Love

by foxdreams



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Banter, But it's there anyways, Catholic Guilt, Coming Out, First Kiss, Flipping the script, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Improper use of confessionals (in the most innocent way possible), Love Confessions, M/M, Pagan Sora, Riku is the oblivious one this time!, Self-Acceptance, This is a story about acceptance not self-torture, but not that intense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 15:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxdreams/pseuds/foxdreams
Summary: "Do you have something to tell me, Sora?”Something stopped him, the same force that kept him in place as Sora, cautiously; so gentle in his approach, rested a hand on the Bible — which had slipped slightly from Riku’s numb fingers — to rest between them, eyes flicking from Riku’s nose to eyes to lips in a strange staccato pattern, and Riku was too consumed with thoughts of Sora, warm and alive, and they had been close before, but this felt different.“Riku,” he said, and his eyes spoke for him.------A story about falling from grace (and maybe for your best friend), but finding yourself along the way.Or: Kiss me once, kiss me twice, kiss me 57 times, cross the line.





	The Greatest Of These Is Love

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of Catholic!Riku being best friends with Pagan!Sora just gripped my heart and shook me like a ragdoll until 14k words fell out. It was just meant to be a scene, I swear.
> 
> The boy has SO MUCH guilt already, there was something cathartic about meditating on and taking that apart in a different context. There's also a special joy in letting Riku be the unsure one, for once.
> 
> This fic is really a VERY self-indulgent love letter to my past teenaged & gay & more Catholic self and I hope it's relatable to some of you out there, as well.
> 
> As you probably know by now, I have a playlist for this too: [on Spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0EJu6yTI9dUbs3mvqWn0IY?si=JztsEDEoT4Cf2hgn22YN5Q)
> 
> Thank you the beautiful, the talented, the original [fireborn](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Fireborn/pseuds/Fireborn) for the beta, and thank you to my writing server for bullying me into posting this. I really poured my big gay heart into this one, fellas.
> 
> (One final note: Ren = Repliku. Toppie used that name for him in one of their fics and it's stuck forever in my brain now.)

The first time, he would tell himself later, was an accident.

It was still too cold to be outside for long even though it was Spring, and that day there was too much mud on the ground to make their usual outdoor activities pleasant, which meant Sora was on entertain-himself-duty until Riku finished his religion work for school. 

Sora, enrolled in the local public school (i.e. not Riku’s private, Catholic, _ Good School) _ had no such homework on a Friday. He was, on the whole, vehemently jealous of that.

“Hey, Riku,” Sora interrupted for the fourth time that hour. His eyes were trained on the ceiling, which was pockmarked with paper stars in various colors, a holdover from one of Sora’s middle school forays into papercraft. Occasionally, he would bounce a rubber ball against the wall and catch it, because Sora could never be truly still. “What’s your favorite part of the Bible?”

“My favorite part?” Riku pressed his finger down into the passage he was taking notes on — something in Corinthians — and turned in his desk chair to look at him.

The ball ceased its assault on his wall. Riku was glad his parents weren’t home to say things about _ damaging the paint _. “Uh, yeah? Don’t you have a favorite part?”

“It’s not...really like a regular book, Sora. It’s like a collection of passages for how to live life all strung together, I guess. How God wants people to live.”

“Yeah, but isn’t there one part you like to read over and over?” Sora raised his head to catch his eye from the canyon of Riku’s blue pillows. “Even I know some of them.”

He paused, flipping through his mental catalogue of quotes, of which there were many. Riku liked flowery passages, more the psalms than anything, because they evoked such _ feeling _. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So. Read one to me,” Sora said, flopping back to the bed with an audible _ fwump. _

“You know, I _ was _ actually trying to get work done tonight,” Riku said, but he was already removing his reading glasses, folding them neatly on the desk and rising to his feet, Bible in hand. It was always hard to say no to Sora. _ You spoil that boy _, his mom accused him once. And, yeah, maybe he did.

“You were reading it _ anyway. _ Besides, I like hearing you read _ ,” _ Sora said, something soft in his tone. Riku’s heart did a strange _ ba-thump _, and he had to blink hard at his bookshelves closely for a second until he could shake it off.

Honestly, he hated hearing himself read, but if Sora liked it, _ well _.

“Fine, but you have to move over,” Riku warned, but Sora only grunted and curled into a ball on his side long enough to throw his bare legs back over Riku’s lap when he was seated on the bed. 

“Not really what I meant,” Riku sighed, but Sora only leaned forward and grinned at him. Sora had never known personal space a day in all the time Riku had known him.

“I”m just making myself _ comfortable _ ,” he said, wiggling his white-socked feet _ and _ his eyebrows until Riku choked on a laugh and pushed them off his lap.

“_Sora _. Gross.”

“Guilty,” he sighed and reclined backward until he was staring at the ceiling again. “_ Okay. _ We’re comfortable. Stop _ stalling _.”

“Patience is a virtue, Sora,” Riku said, already tracing the lines of a satin bookmark he kept in the book. Sora snorted. “Anyway. I have one...it’s a little embarrassing, though.”

“No _ way _,” Sora said, sitting up to fix Riku with his earnest eyes. His blue t-shirt set off his eyes, Riku noticed. “It’s not embarrassing if it’s true.”

If only it was that simple.

“Okay. But you can’t make fun of me for it,” he warned, though he knew Sora — wonderful, open-minded, unselfconscious Sora — would never. “Promise me.”

“Pinky swear,” he said, his pinky extended from a hand he held out to Riku. “I wouldn’t, anyway.”

“Okay,” Riku said and shook it. “Good.”

Sora stared at him, something soft there for a second before he blinked and it was gone, and he looked away. Their hands fell to the bed, naturally close. Riku stared at them for a few long seconds, his own pale fingers against Sora’s constantly tan and freckled knuckles, the contrast gluing him in place for a moment before he could shake it off. Electric nerves danced in his stomach as he grabbed the book with trembling hands.

He inhaled shakily, then split the heavy leather Bible’s spine across his lap, the comforting feeling of the paper something that never failed to calm him. He brushed his too-long bangs out of his eyes, found the passage marked with a ribbon and began.

“Love is patient, love is kind,” he began, his voice surprisingly shaky. Something about this was weirdly_ intimate _, different from when he would read in front of an audience for mass. “...It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs,” he read, forcing himself to take a too-loud breath in the quiet room. “...Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails,” he continued, his voice gone quiet and close in an almost-whisper. He could see Sora leaning forward to hear him, just outside his periphery, rapt. “But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away,” he finished.

When his eyes rose from the passage, Sora was so much _ closer _ , and Riku suddenly considered how piercingly electric his eyes were...why had he never _ noticed _ that before? 

“That’s...really beautiful,” Sora murmured, his eyes glassy with something defying description, one of his hands curling into his shirt, over his heart. Sora always cried so _easily, _soaking through Riku’s shirts at every sad movie. “_And _it’s true.”

Riku’s head felt foggy, his hands vaguely shaky, so he tightened his hand on the book to steady himself. It was...how the passage always made him feel, like he was_ achy _ and hollow in a way he didn’t comprehend, like he had all of this... _ water _ to pour into something, but no glass in his hands to hold it; like he had something _ nearly _figured out, right out of his reach.

The moment stretched on, gathering weight as it went. He wasn’t sure how, but Sora had turned to face him, Sora’s eyes never leaving his as they both breathed, some nameless _ thing _ that had been crackling between them at various times for months suddenly _ struck _ to life, terror at war with anticipation in Riku’s heart. He was hyperaware of every bit of the ten scant inches between them, of Sora’s knees radiating heat and Sora’s throat working _ and _— 

He licked his lips, searching for something to _ say _ , to move, to _ do something but let this drag on. _

He opened his mouth, and nothing came. Riku just watched, some planet’s moon orbiting Sora as he waited for..._ something_. _ Say something! _he told himself.

“'It’s true,' huh? Do you have something to tell me, Sora?” He had been trying for a taunt, something to...take a hammer to _ whatever this was _ , but it just came out _ unsure. _

Something stopped him, the same force that kept him in place as Sora, cautiously; _ so _ gentle in his approach, rested a hand on the Bible — which had slipped from Riku’s numb fingers — to rest between them, eyes flicking from Riku’s nose to eyes to lips in a strange staccato pattern, and Riku was too consumed with thoughts of _ Sora _ , warm and alive, and they had been _ close _ before, but this felt different— 

“_Riku _,” he said, and his eyes spoke for him.

Sora braced his palm along the book and leaned forward, his hand cupped over Riku’s, and in the next second, Sora had leaned the rest of the way in and kissed him.

Riku left his eyes open — too wide, probably — but Sora closed his. He stared _ hard _ at the light pooling on the floor from the window and the white curtains, the dust floating in the beams, and the length of Sora’s eyelashes on his cheeks. Nothing was processing. He forgot to breathe, frozen as he was with Sora’s breathy sigh fanned against his chin, _ warm _ in the too-cold room.

It was only a few seconds, really. _ Hardly _ a kiss. Hardly a _ first _ kiss.

A few seconds to shatter everything.

His heart, having remembered to beat, pushed blood violently back into his ears as Sora pulled back.

He tried not to reel back too quickly, but it wasn’t in his control — Riku jerked back as if slapped, his hands a white-knuckled vice on the covers.

Sora was staring at him with unreadable, tremulous eyes.

“Riku?” He said, hesitantly. One of his hands was raised, like he badly wanted to grab Riku's hand. His voice was the _ smallest _it had ever been. 

Riku wrenched his hand back, the Bible in his white-knuckled grip, and held it protectively to his chest like a shield between them.

“I...don’t, I, I can’t,” he stuttered out, then fell silent. “I…”

His head was spinning, _ the room was spinning _ , he had been on a tilt-a-whirl once in his life and once was _ enough, _ but this was _ that feeling magnified times one hundred, _ all over again, and— 

_ Moments _ flashed through his mind; lingering looks from his mother as Sora hung himself from Riku’s shoulders, laughing, and Riku had slung his own arm around his waist. Sora's hand sometimes lingered on Riku’s back, a comforting gesture he appreciated. Sora’s touch was always relaxing and sure and certain, but Riku knew his parents would never understand their little gestures; their little touches a language only they understood. 

They were careful around them, most of the time. Sora had only forgotten once.

Then, a disbelieving conversation later about the _ influence _ Sora’s _ kind _ was having on him, about how Sora was just affectionate; it didn’t _ mean _ anything, Sora was just _ like _ that.. It was just...just so _ Sora _ to not notice or care how things _ looked _, to see right through the skin and to the soul.

But now.

Everything snapped into clarity; all the pieces in place.

Sora always meant everything he did. 

His heartbeat was ten decibels in his eardrums.

“You’re…”

“I’m _ what _ , Riku?” Sora pressed, eyes like sparking tinder as he leaned forward, tension rippling into the tightness of his throat. He wanted Riku to _ say _ it—explain why this could _ not _ be happening, could not ever happen, not to _ Riku _ , if he wanted a future in the church, and especially not between _ them _.

But when he looked at him, and really _ saw _ — Sora was still so close Riku could count his freckles, feel the ambient warmth of his skin, the light striping across his face with a single shadow across his eyes that flickered with the ceiling fan, and Riku _ could not _say it. His mind was slowed down, long and pulled taffy and stuffed with mothballs, and he couldn’t...do it.

His lips still tingled where Sora had brushed against them, and he wanted to press his fingers to them, so he curled them around the edge of the Bible instead, hard enough to leave crescents in the cover.

The scripture was burned in his heart; he could recite the lines any other time: a set of rules that sometimes felt more like a minefield for a kid who kept bumping into new things he had done wrong; sometimes it felt like before he knew it, he had blown everything sky high again.

He _ knew _ all the lines, the curl and descent of the letters sometimes a comfort to run his fingers over like another pair of hands. But now Sora’s hand had been entwined with his on top of them, and _ Sora _ felt like so much _ more _ than the pages could possibly contain; the way Riku’s heart stuttered and opened and called for him to close the distance more than he felt _ warned _ about.

Sora was so much more than could be contained in ink and paper or contained between the simple bounds of a sentence; two periods to hold the whole of a person.

Sora was sunlight wreathed in human skin, a soul aflame with light bleeding into every pore, something so big it was hard to look at him without squinting, sometimes. Nothing was too much for him. Sora believed in things like faeries and Gods, plural; he believed that the world was inherently kind and that _ nothing done in love was wrong _ , and Riku _ knew _, because Sora had told him that a thousand times.

Maybe Sora hoped that one of those thousand attempts would seed and root into the unforgiving concrete of his heart.

Riku looked away.

In the end, he couldn’t say it. Not one word to mend what he had broken.

Sora got up to leave, eventually, a quiet excuse on his lips, and something of Riku’s heart left with him.

————

That night, every bead of his skin-warmed rosary he kissed just felt like Sora. Every bead laid across his palm felt like Sora’s hands, gently curling around his own.

He pressed it closer to his mouth and trembled.

He lost count seven times before finally giving up.

————

That week, he _ almost _ went to confession three separate times. Got as far as wringing his hands into knots outside the booth, head jerking around even though nobody was filtering in yet, standing just far enough away to be deniable, before finally turning away.

He couldn’t because he didn’t know what to say.

I kissed a boy? A boy kissed _ me _? 

He couldn’t believe that five Hail Marys would be enough to erase that. _ He wasn’t sure if he wanted them to. _

How much would he confess? That he spent every waking moment reliving the ten seconds of the previous week? That he couldn’t erase Sora’s fearful, stormy eyes from his memory? That they had only fought twice in their entire friendship, and he wasn’t sure anymore how to parse this without talking to him daily?

And then, of course, the secret thing he only allowed himself to think after insomnia had lowered his defenses, made him sluggish and slower than usual:

That he may want to kiss him again?

It sounded so _ minor _ when he put it like that, stacked it up against the other things he’d ever confessed to. Which...also sounded stupid now, here, when he was older and realized lying to his parents was sometimes for their own good and not a mortal sin. And yet.

He _ couldn’t _ voice it. Not yet. To _ voice _it would make it real, would make it solid and true in a way he couldn't admit yet out loud.

He felt like everyone could see the mark on his soul as they shook his hands during mass, their smiling faces formed the benediction. He was trembling through the service, twitching at every pointed reading. He dropped his book — the sound echoed in the vaulted church — and a kindly, smiling old woman he’d known since he was five slid it back into his hands.

_ You don’t know _ , he thought. _ And you’re touching my hand like nothing is wrong. _

_ Riku _ , she said with familiarly. _ You dropped your book. _ Like she _ knew _ him.

He didn’t even know himself.

The feeling swirled in him; a choking miasma he found no relief from no matter how many times he shuddered and pressed his fingers to his own mouth so hard he’d forget Sora’s mark on it.

————

He lasted two weeks — two horrifically long, difficult weeks of sleeping through classes, ignoring Sora’s occasional texts, and two weeks of spending hours he should have been praying missing Sora so terribly it tore him apart.

Two weeks, and then he broke.

On that Thursday, as usual, he taught an after school Bible class for kids with Naminé, and he felt himself pass out papers with mechanical precision, thankful, for once, that he didn’t usually smile all the time, like Sora did. It was hard now to even think of doing it.

He heard himself read the scripture and in the back of his mind, the whole time, was Sora and the fearful look in his eyes as he had pulled back. 

The blood pounded so hard across his ears he had a headache that didn’t subside for hours.

Finally, when the bell rung and the children had been shepherded home, he stood there, staring at the carved figure on the cross by the old glass basement windows.

_ Is this what You wanted for me? _ He thought, wondering for the first time if anyone was listening. _ I’ve never set one foot out of line my entire life, I teach kids, I volunteer — I did everything right, and this is what I get? _

He stopped himself, feeling horrifically guilty for even _ thinking _ it. How horribly _ selfish _ he was to let his thoughts go so far down this path.

He couldn’t — he _ refused — to _ put Sora in the same category as all of _ that _ . There was nothing _ wrong _ with Sora. Enough people had told him that in his life. He would not be another voice in that mob. 

“Riku?” There was a soft voice and a gentle hand at his shoulder.

He exhaled sharply, the tension rippling through his body ebbing slightly. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said automatically.

She frowned. “You’ve been staring at those papers for twenty minutes.”

He glanced down at a stack of coloring book pages (courtesy of the youngest class) on the desk in front of him. There was no pretending to be _ reading _ on this one.

“Sorry,” he said finally.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” She said, leaning forward to search his face. Naminé had this intense, focused way of looking at a person that reminded him an awful lot of — no. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He knew she wasn’t saying what he thought she was, but the simple words clenched like a hand around his throat, brought fresh burning to his eyes. 

“I’ve just...got a lot on my mind,” he said. It came out more wretched than he had intended.

“_ Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ _ ,” she quoted at him. “I believe that’s in _ Galatians.” _

If anything, he appreciated the gesture._ If only she knew. _

_ “ _I must look pretty bad if you’re quoting the Bible at me,” he tried, hoping the way his voice warbled wasn’t too obvious.

She hummed. “True. I only reserve the _ priestly _ talk for emergencies.”

_ Emergencies _. Yeah, this sure qualified.

“Nami,” he heard himself say, he hadn’t used the nickname in years, and it felt clumsy on his tongue. “Something...happened. And I don’t know what to do.”

He was scaring her, and he knew it by the way her hand flinched back the smallest bit to rest on his arm.

“Okay, Riku,” she said, and he watched her face set into something determined. “Do you need help?”

_ Yes. Please, yes _. He didn’t have the strength in him to refuse it, not now.

“I...I think so. Can we go...somewhere else?”

“Of course,” she said, and she twined her arm with his to lead him. He couldn’t help but think about how she was smaller; somehow frailer than Sora. 

Her hands were always cold, and he remembered that with the clarity of dunking his face in cold water. He wondered when the last time he had touched her was.

Or anyone, besides Sora.

It felt..._ fine _. Normal. Just skin on his skin, comforting in how she was skimming her fingers across the inside of his elbow. 

Not like he was hyperventilating, sparks like wire fires through his veins, a tingling sensation spreading like ripples around the base of his skull as Sora’s breath fanned across his chin.

_ Normal. Normal like how it’d always been. _

Riku remembered her as a kid — barely six and utter chaos on legs. She was the priest's daughter but had the run of all the after school programs and as her best friend, so did Riku. Routinely, they skipped class to act out scenes in the belfry, laughing hysterically, the old, cracked open windows and their stained-glass scenes burned into his memory. She would draw him pictures, sprawling landscapes right out of Oathkeeper, which the other kids had to sneak in for them since it was decidedly an _ unchristian _ story that dealt with witches and magic. They kept it under a loose floorboard in the closet, and each time they removed it with such gentle reverence: the faded blue cover was promptly dusted, and the book opened with such pomp and circumstance it reminded Riku of the priests and their sacred vessels.

She would call him _ her knight _, and they would talk about taking on the world together in the way only kids could.

He wondered what had happened to _ that _ feeling. How he had shed all his friends until all he had was Sora, and his brother, if he was feeling generous that day — which was fine until he had nobody to talk to _ but _ Sora — _ about _ Sora.

How had he gotten here? 

“We’re here,” she told him softly. He was suddenly happy she had been guiding him, because he didn’t remember a single second of the trip from the classrooms to the church proper. She frowned up at him, her eyes on his undoubtedly clammy face. “You don’t look well, Riku. Maybe you should sit down.”

She helped to sit him on a pew, and he instantly pressed his hands to his eyes and forced himself to breathe against the rolling of his stomach.

Naminé knelt to press a gentle hand to his knee, pausing, until he felt less like he was going to vomit. “Better?” she asked.

He nodded shakily, then blinked his eyes open.

“I figured you wanted somewhere to talk with some privacy, so…”

“The confessional?” He recognized the old wooden structure across from them, though he hadn’t been by in an embarrassingly long time. There was a row of three of them against the stone wall to their left, hung with thick, heavy velvet curtains and ornately carved with the stations of the cross across the middle. The church was blessedly empty, being a weeknight, and the artificial lights were dimmed so as to save on electricity. 

Their voices, though soft, echoed against the marble floors and the tall wooden rafters. Their only audience was a carved figure of the crucifixion behind the altar and maybe the severe-looking statues to the left and right of the dias.

“It’s _ for _ confessions,” She said innocently. “I don’t see why _ not _ .” She inclined her head, twining her arms together behind her back in a gesture that made his chest ache. How long had it been since they had talked? _ Really _ talked? “Besides. I thought it might be easier, for you, if you didn’t have to see me.”

She was right, but the shame burned hot in his gut anyway. She was still so _ kind _, willing to listen to Riku fall apart when he hadn’t so much as texted her in weeks.

“If anyone asks, it was my idea,” she said easily as she rose and slipped behind the curtain on the priest’s side.

Nobody _ would _ ask, of course. The ecosystem of the church ran on rumors, and they were too easily spun to be dispelled by the simple truth. He smiled weakly anyway and pushed aside the velvet to take his place on the other side of the false wall.

The small space was more cramped than he remembered, but it had also been...probably years since he had properly confessed. Now, his knees dug into the hard wood of the low bench when he sunk down before the screen, and he had to fold his body awkwardly into the narrowness between the screen and the bench behind him. 

It was yet another reminder of how he didn’t _ fit _anymore, and he had to swallow hard against the thought.

Automatically, he folded his hands.

He heard the rough slide of the screen being opened, but with the lights mostly off it was hard to make her out beyond a vague shadow. Her breathing sounded impossibly close in the small space.

“Can you hear me, Riku?” came her voice, and Riku snapped from his thoughts, his heart racing afresh.

He felt his heartbeat in his fingertips. “Yeah.” Then, “It’s been six years since my last confession.”

“It’s probably been longer for me,” she mused. 

“Really? Even with your dad?”

“He doesn’t know a lot of things about me,” she said quietly, the lilting tone of her voice something nostalgic and soft. “It’s just the way it is.”

And that was _ true _ , wasn’t it? Riku’s parents didn’t know him, either. Not anymore. As long as he went to mass and did his teaching and pulled good grades, pesky things like his _ feelings _ could be easily placed in a closet, where they placed all the things not worth inspecting. Like old, misplaced Christmas ornaments. 

Strange, how that had never occurred to him before. How long had his feelings been on a shelf, gathering dust without him?

Then again, he had never had to face them before.

“Now. What ails you, my son?” her voice came through the screen, pitched low and nearly unrecognizable.

“Naminé!” Riku’s own laugh took him by surprise; he nearly knocked his head into the wall.

“Sorry,” she said, though she didn’t sound it.”You sounded so _ serious _, I couldn’t resist. Did I sound like my father?”

”Yeah,” Riku snickered. “You have the tone down, but we have to work on your depth.”

“_ Thank you, my son _ ,” Naminé said solemnly, even lower, and Riku’s stomach clenched as he laughed anew. _ He had missed her so much. _

He had needed a laugh so, _ so _ badly. Usually, it was Sora who...never mind.

“Really, though. What’s on your mind?”

The smile fell from his face as his gaze trailed the carpet. It was a garish red color, almost maroon in the dark. Maybe if he focused on that, he could forget the sudden urge to get up and run out of this church, out of this town, out of his life.

“It’s. Really. Personal,” Riku heard himself said, finally. “I just don’t know who else I can...tell.” 

He wanted to curse himself for that. 

“Riku,” she said. “You don’t have to tell _ me _—“

Of course she understood, she was always assuming she was a _ last resort _, no matter how many times Riku had insisted otherwise. He was proving it now, wasn’t he?

“I _ have _ to,” he insisted, his hands white-knuckled into fists on top of the bench. “Sorry. Just, I don’t know how to start.”

_ It’s been so long since I told you anything _ , he thought. _ I’m rusty, now. Forgive me. _

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

_ The beginning _, of course. Like he would when they were kids, acting out scenes from other people’s stories.

He knew they were in a confessional, and somehow though he couldn’t see her, it still felt _ horribly _ intimate to be telling her this. Even knowing she was on the other side of the sliding screen, musty and old with history as it was, was enough to spook him. He could picture her eyes, bright and kind and curious, even with his own shut.

He turned around with some difficulty, folding his too-long limbs up enough to twist, then sunk from the bench to the floor with shaking knees, felt the cheap carpet gripping his legs, and laid his back against the false wall. It was...better, like facing away from the truth would make it easier to bear.

“Hey Naminé?” he asked, head tilted back against the wood. “Would you do me a favor and close your eyes?”

“Okay,” she said without question. “Closed. Go ahead.”

“Okay,” he breathed, then paused. The moment lingered, both of them breathing into the silence in the way old friends could. Then, he began.

“I have a...friend.” The word seemed too small to describe him, suddenly. “My...best friend. You might know him. Sora?”

“Yes,” He could hear Namine’s smile in her soft voice filtering through the wall between them, soothing. “Well, I don’t _ know _ him, but I feel like I do. You talk about him all the time.”

“I...I do?”

“You didn’t know?” Her voice took on an unmistakably deeper, even tone as if to mimic him. “Sora would _ love _ this, I have to text Sora, this altar cloth matches his eyes, _ don’t you think _?” Her laugh tinkled like bells. “It’s very cute.”

He felt himself going red, all the way down to the chest under his button-down, and he had to bury his face in his hands. Did...did everyone know before he did? Did he really sound like that?

Blessedly, she took up the silence, soaked it up like she so often did.

“He’s the sweet boy with the two mothers, right? Drops off donuts sometimes for the 11 am services? Brown hair?”

Sora did that and more, running errands for Riku when someone else in his youth group inevitably dropped the ball. God, he was so _ kind _, and of course the only thing the church would remember was that he had two mothers, accepting his kindness with strained smiles and whispered words. It was a miracle Sora kept returning even as they tried so hard to keep him away.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Riku said. _ This _ , he could do. He could talk about _ facts _ , _ about _Sora and his family. “His mom is a math teacher and his...other mom is a lawyer. She taught me in middle school, that’s how we met.”

Naminé made a sound to indicate that she was listening, a soft hum in the dark that brought him back to himself.

He had begun twisting his cross necklace, a nervous habit his mom always had to comment on. He didn’t know _ how _ to tell this part. “A few...days ago, he...did something, and... I'm sorry, this is…” He dissolved into a mirthless laugh. “Just...give me a second.”

“Do you want to write it down, if it’s too hard to say? I have my sketchbook somewhere here...”

He _ really, really _ did, but... “No, no, let me. I have to _ say _ it.”

He wondered if it was a sin to dance around the truth this much in a _ confessional _.

“Sora. He..._ hekissedme _,” he said in a rushed mumble. The silence on the other end sent his stomach into fresh knots. He waited on the proverbial hammer to fall on his skull, sweat dripping down his neck the longer the seconds passed.

“Riku? I didn’t catch that…”

Riku wanted to _ die _ here, rot into pieces until he sunk into the earth where he wouldn’t be subjected to this mortification.

“_ Sora kissed me _ ,” he hissed, at _ way _ too high a volume. He heard her recoil from the window as if he’d shouted, and, well, he probably had. Adrenaline was rushing through him with every heartbeat, and he buried his head in his knees to stop the nausea from crawling back up his throat.

What would she think of him now? Would she declare him a sinner, like he suspected himself to be? She wasn’t a priest, so the seal of confession probably didn’t actually apply. _ She could say whatever she wanted to her father _ , his anxiety whispered to him. _ This was a mistake. _

He wasn’t used to having _ secrets _. He didn’t know where to keep them, and now he was already going around spilling them out.

“I see,” Naminé said quietly. Just that. Her tone was so _ neutral _ it was sending fresh waves of fear through his chest. “I assume — by your reaction — that you didn’t expect it.”

“Yeah,” he said, a little mirthless chuckle. “You could say that.”

“What did you do?”

“N-nothing. He just… I was reading a Bible passage to him and he just _ did _ it, and I didn’t know _ what _ to do so I just did...nothing. And then he...left.”

“So you didn’t say anything after that?”

Riku winced. “I...might have said something.” 

“Ah,” Naminé said. 

Silence descended. 

“Have you talked to him since?”

“No. I needed some time to think. I can’t...think around Sora, usually. Not about this.”

“Did you ever wonder why?” Naminé asked gently, and Riku’s heart felt crushed in a vice. Okay, she wasn’t...acting like she hated him, and that was all he could ask for, at the moment. 

But the question gave voice to something he hadn’t been able to articulate before.

He thought of every time Sora brushed too close when they walked together, gesturing animatedly about his newest comic books; of every time he had fallen asleep tangled together with Riku on the couch in his basement after a movie, warm breath tickling at his throat as they shared a quilt. Then there were times Sora chose to sit in his quiet room with him while he slogged through mountains of _ homework _ instead of doing literally _ anything _ fun, and of how he tried so _ hard _ to understand him even when Riku probably made it more difficult than it should have been.

“I guess I never did,” Riku rasped. “Not until now.”

“Let me ask you this. Is this about you and Sora?” she asked. “Or the church?”

What a question. “Both?”

She made a sound of acknowledgment. “Yes, but, if the church _ wasn’t _ a factor. How would you feel then?”

He didn’t know how to answer, so the silence spread between them once more as Riku felt the air turn suffocating. It was the _ not knowing _ that was slowly killing him. It was hard to even...consider it.

Instead of answering, he heard her shift until her back thunked the wall as well. Like this, he could picture them back to back, staring up at the ceiling of the confessional, popcorn ceiling like stars in the dim candlelight, two kids trading stories in the dark.

“May I tell you a secret too? I think it might help.“ She inhaled, the sound soft and intimate.

“Of course,” he told her. “Anything.”

“I have someone I love, too. A girl. Her name is Xion.”

He was stunned. This was so far from the reaction he expected that he had no idea what to say for several long seconds.

“Then...you…”

“Yes. I understand. We’ve been friends for years, and I was just as surprised when I realized I loved her…but she’s brave, and lovely, and kind. How could I _ not _?”

_ Love. That was what they were talking about, wasn’t It? What a frightening word. _

“That’s...she sounds great, Naminé.”

“She is. She’s beautiful, too. One day perhaps I’ll help her believe all of that.”

“I’m sure she will,” Riku said, and he meant it. Naminé was creative and well-spoken and gentle, and anyone would be a fool not to love her, that much was obvious. 

“Do you think God makes mistakes, Riku?” Her voice was gentle and soft as a stream, and it guided him back every time he wandered away.

The abrupt topic change shifted him out of himself. “I...no. I guess not.”

“We can ask God for guidance. But it’s _ people _ we trust to answer for him. Isn’t that strange?”

Riku hadn’t ever thought about it, really. “Should _ you _ be saying this? A priest’s daughter?”

“I’m sure my father thinks he’s doing as God wills,” she said. “I also think I’m doing as He wills, by living in love. Ultimately, both of us could be wrong, or right, but I’ve stayed awake too many nights trying to feel what the right thing is. I had to come to a conclusion.”

“What did you decide?”

“What my heart says is true. Because God made it perfectly as well.”

“Now you really sound like Sora.”

“You see?” she said softly. “You’re doing it again.”

He startled a little at the revelation, then buried a fist against his heart.

“Do I...sound like I love him?”

“I can't tell you that, Riku,” she said softly. “You’ll have to ask your heart.”

_ I didn’t know I could feel like this, _ his heart was probably saying. _ I don’t know if I should. I’m afraid. _

_ Tell me what I should do. _

Funny. He usually asked things like that of Sora.

“It just feels like he’s been around me for so long that I can’t remember how I felt without him,” Riku murmured. He _ ached _ , under all the formless anxiety: bone-deep and throbbing, and there were too many voices in his head to pull this one apart. His mind tried desperately to free the thread labeled _ Sora _ from the tapestry, to examine and catalogue it and put it back once he’d reached a conclusion. It was the _ not knowing _ that was killing him.

“I think you should tell him that.”

Riku sighed. “I guess I have to talk to him, don’t I?”

“That might be a good start,” she said mildly.

“I just...don’t want to lose him. I don’t think I’m very good at...feelings.”

“I don’t think he wants to lose you either. He probably thinks he already has.”

Riku was afraid of that. “What do I do?”

“Tell him what you told me. But...remember. You can find another church,” she said, “but you won’t find another Sora.”

“You’re right about that,” he agreed, and this time he let himself feel the fondness, the warmth, the tingle behind his skull as he pictured Sora’s bright smile, and he laughed. “Sora would tell me I was being a big idiot right now. He would probably tell me he would love me no matter how much of an idiot I was. He’s always...following that heart of his around without a second thought.”

“He sounds perfect for you,” she said quietly, maybe a little wistful.

“He really...really is,” he said, and a nameless emotion rushed through him as he _ let _ himself feel it without tamping it down, something that tangled as it rushed through his body. The curiosity, finally, winning against the guilt.

“Riku.”

“Yeah?”

“The way I see it, the way we feel… It’s between us and God. Until we’re ready, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Riku echoed. Something was comforting about that, too. “I like that.”

“Until then, I’m here.”

“Me too,” Riku said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been, but I am.”

“It’s alright,” she said, “since you’re here now.”

He heard a rustle as she shifted, and the curtain was pulled aside, the sudden light too bright in his eyes as Naminé was silhouetted against it. He realized his legs had been cramping, tingling a little from disuse, as he tried to sit up to meet her.

“Here’s your penance,” she said, extending her hand with her pinky out. 

Automatically, he reached up to meet her and entwined them, the feeling so familiar it made his eyes burn all over again. 

“Tell me, oh wise one.”

Her slow smile lit up her face as her hair fell over one shoulder in a shimmering wave. “You have to call me the _ second _ anything happens. I’m tired of getting all my news from your brother. He leaves out _ all _ the important parts.”

That was fair. Ren texted in short, broken sentences that communicated how much he despised modern technology in 10 words or less.

Riku laughed again, freer and easier than he had before. “Okay. Sure. It’s a promise.”

They shook on it, three times to make it an oath.

“Thanks, Naminé. For everything.”

“You’re welcome. And...It’ll be fine, Riku. You’ll see. I just know it.”

————

The second time was less of an accident.

He sought Sora out under the shade of the ancient oak tree behind his house, where he always was when he wanted _ time to think _, sprawled out on his stomach in the grass with an open sketchbook in front of him. He was doodling in the margins with what looked like a feather-shaped pen, because one, Sora couldn’t focus very well unless he was doing two things at once, and two, he loved anything charming, and Riku knew both of those things after several long years.

Riku made little noise on the approach, the long grasses ticking his calves as he walked, hands in his pockets as he shuffled along. Everything in him was screaming at him to turn back before he could confront this, but he had been turning the other cheek for so long — forcing unpleasant things down until they ceased to be important — he didn’t remember what it felt like to be hit from the front.

Sora noticed him without seeing because he had an uncanny ability to do that sometimes. His pen didn’t stop scratching over the paper, bleached white and green and sun-dappled from the protective canopy of the leaves like its own kind of sanctuary.

Riku wondered when church had stopped feeling like that and had started feeling _ close _, the old iron supports across the vaulted ceiling more like ever-watchful giants craning to stare balefully down at him, the smell of old wood shavings and dust more of a terror than something soothing. 

And here he was, running to the only real sanctuary he had left.

He stood there, pathetically wringing his hands, back and forth, back and forth.

“Riku,” Sora said by way of greeting. He never raised his eyes. The folds of his black tank top gathered across his waist and caught enough to reveal a strip of tanned skin across his back, vertebrae prominent on the skin.

Riku ripped his eyes away.

“Sora,” he responded, awkwardly late.

“It’s been two weeks,” he said, tone lighter than Riku probably deserved. Riku was more grateful for Sora than ever, in that moment. “I kinda thought you forgot where I lived.” 

_ If you had come, I would have answered _ , he thought, so fiercely he surprised himself. Like _ he _ wasn’t the one that had drawn the lines between them.

_ You can’t find another Sora _ , Naminé’s words rung in his head. _ But he was so afraid of himself, and of losing Sora, and both of them at once. _

He had_ planned _ this discussion — had pictured this scenario one thousand ways but now, standing here, he was just...blank. _ Empty _ . _ Like he always was around Sora. _

“We should...talk,” Riku said finally. If Sora was in a better mood, he probably would have teased him for sounding so stiff and formal, like he had before Sora met him.

”Probably,” Sora said easily. He was adding eyes to the winged thing taking up a corner of the book, scribbling in circles and circles until it looked mostly black. He _ could _ have mentioned that it had been Riku ignoring his texts for the entirety, but Sora was too kind for that. He would make a model Catholic, really, with how much he _ forgave _.

“I’m sorry,” Riku began, but he couldn’t continue.

“No, _ I’m _ sorry,” Sora said and smiled apologetically. “I shouldn’t have...surprised you out of nowhere like that. It was wrong. It won’t happen again.” 

The acknowledgment felt good in Riku’s heart, like it had begun to do something to seal part of the hurt over, even as his stomach turned at the end. 

“But I’m _ not _ sorry for how I feel,” Sora continued, dipping his pen in the ink bottle. “And I won’t _ ever _ be sorry for that, so.” Sora’s eyes fixed on him, his entire body coiled tensely to spring. “If you have a problem with that, you should tell me now.”

It was then, that it hit Riku: he had never...explained. _ Oh _ . _ Oh. _

“Oh, God— Sora, no— I don’t care that you—” He couldn’t believe Sora had even _ thought _it, honestly— 

“Kiss boys?” Sora said for him. He brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun filtering down into his face, and it shrouded his face.

“Yeah,” Riku finished lamely. He had begun to twist his necklace around his hands, the familiar points of the cross something grounding against his palms. “It’s...it doesn’t _ change _ anything.”

“It changed _ something, _ Riku,” Sora said. He left his knuckles fall across his eyes, his palm open as if to catch the sun inside. “I think it changed a lot of things.”

Riku didn’t know how to respond, so Sora finally rolled over to look up at him, the grass still flat where he had been. He’d probably been out there for hours, just _ waiting _. “Right?”

Riku exhaled.

Sora sighed and pulled himself up on one leg, his arms slung around the knee. “If you want to talk, we should _ actually _ talk, you know?”

He had _ so much _ he wanted to say. So many things warring for the right to be spoken behind his tongue, bitter anger that he was happy _ enough _ before, but now he _ knew _ things that would mean he couldn’t ever live in that state again, things he had been tamping down when he wasn’t face to face with the _ cause _of it all.

A cold, pitted dread about what this meant for everything else, and the soft, quiet knowledge that kissing Sora had made something deep and unnamable slot into place in his soul, the sheer _ rightness _ a resonance he had been searching for his entire life, and as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t _ blame _ Sora for that. Not like his parents would.

“Hey,” Sora murmured. He had gotten up at some point and was now stilling Riku’s fingers on the pendant and gently drawing them away. Riku hadn’t even seen him rise from his place on the grass. “Relax. It’s just me. Tell me what you’re thinking.” Then he laughed, sudden and sharp. “I’m pagan, not psychic.”

The ghost of a laugh left his throat, and he was smiling before he even knew what happened, disarmed by Sora, as always.

“Really? I always thought they handed out the superpowers at the monthly potluck or whatever.”

“God, I wish,” Sora said, rolling his eyes. “It would beat mom’s potato salad — _ don’t tell her I said that _ — and I’d never have to study again. And it’d make being friends with you a _ lot _ easier.” He grinned.

“Hey!” Riku said, and Sora shoulder-bumped him until his back hit the tree, both of them smiling for a second like the past two weeks hadn’t happened.

“Yes, mister broody?” Sora challenged, his eyes sparking with defiance.

Riku wanted to kiss the smirk from his face, then felt himself go red at the thought. He didn’t have permission to think that, but all of these thoughts were pushing forward at once regardless. “I don’t brood.”

“Sure,” Sora crowed, hands on his hips. “You’re just mad because you have no follow up.”

Their mirror grins went strained and faded as the seconds elapsed, and something concerned and sad replaced it on Sora’s face.

“Okay. What’s wrong? I mean, I know, but I don’t _ know _, so. Talk to me, Riku.”

“I don’t know what I’m _ doing _ here,” Riku said finally, resting his head against the bark and _ looking _ at Sora’s face, the sirens in his mind all blaring that _ this was not allowed _ . He ignored them. “I’m… I…just _ miss _ you, Sora.”

“I’m right here,” Sora said softly. He was still watching him warily, eyes flicking across Riku’s face like he was speedreading. He was like a fawn, unsteady on bus limbs and trying to compensate. It looked _ wrong _ on Sora, and Riku just eyed him helplessly.

“But you _ know _ what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Sora said eventually, and he bit his lip, the soft press something Riku locked on immediately. “Riku, tell me something. Do you...regret it?”

“Yes,” Riku breathed before he could stop it, but caught Sora’s hands in his own as he started to draw away, his face crumpled in. He had told God as much, over and over again for thirteen days, cycling from screaming it to silence. But never once did the _ feelings _ leave him. “Wait. Let me...explain.”

Riku’s voice was wavering as it was drawn out. “I’m sorry because now I can’t ever go back to what I was before, because now I _ know _ ,” he laughed,and drew a little closer. “I can’t stop...thinking about it. About you. I’m going crazy, Sora. I don’t...what should I _ do _?”

That was too much to ask, and certainly too much to answer. He worked his throat for a beat, two beats, and then Sora closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. We can work with that.”

Riku wanted _ so much _, in that moment, to believe him.

“I know what the...what my parents want me to do, and I know what my church wants me to do, but I...don’t know if I know what _ God _ wants me to do,” Riku said, his words tumbling over each other as they got faster, as he bled the thoughts out and into Sora’s hands. Because that was it: the final stumbling block, no matter how many times he tried to be as sure as Naminé was. Some part of him _ doubted _, as it always did.

Sora hummed as he raised his eyes skyward in thought, then leaned forward, hesitantly, to wrap Riku’s hands with his own. Riku let him.

“So what does your _ heart _ want you to do?” Sora tilted his head, smiling. “Isn’t that where God is supposed to talk to you?”

“I…” Trust Sora to condense an entire lifetime’s worth of religious constructs into something so digestible and simple. “I guess so.”

_ “ _ So, what is it saying?” Sora said, curling a hand around his ear to press it to Riku’s chest like he was listening to someone through a wall. Riku felt the desire to wrap him in his arms so _ tangibly _ now that he knew what to look for, and the affection bloomed warm and radiant in his ribs. “I can’t quite make it out.”

It crested in him and overflowed.

“I want to...do that again,” Riku said, surprising himself. The burn of the truth was so much he shut his eyes against it, every thought like clawed, charred hands beckoning him downward with every syllable. He wasn’t sure if this was still the path to salvation; thought maybe he’d stumbled off _ that _the minute Sora had gleefully pulled him away. Strange, how he was about to step off it again.

Sora pulled back, and the backs of his fingertips glanced his cheek, so gentle that Riku flinched.

“Are you sure? You were pretty shaken up, Riku. You really scared me.” Sora frowned at him, so serious and open that Riku felt his heart clench in response.

Riku nodded jerkily, his hands digging into the bark behind him, like somehow _ that _ would lessen the gravity of what he was asking for.

“I want to be...sure.”

Sora bobbed his head once and caught his eyes, so, so gentle. “Okay,” he said. “But you can’t call it a sin. Even to yourself. No matter what you feel.”

“I can’t promise that,” Riku said, barely above a whisper. “And I still don’t _ know _ what I feel.”

“It’s okay to not know,” Sora told him, his smile pulled down at the edges. “This...stuff...it’s hard. It takes a long time. But I’m still here, if you still want me.”

The only thing his heart was saying was that he would much rather figure something out _ with _ Sora than be away from him another second.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Sora said quietly, his smile back to small and disarming, and this time he waited for Riku to nod. It wasn’t any less nerve-wracking for being expected, but he tried to stay very still, his hands scrabbling for purchase against the tree as Sora leaned in. His hair caught the dappled light in brilliant stripes of firey auburn, the skin around his nose pinked with a blush.

Sora rose on his tiptoes and their noses bumped, Sora’s breath an airy laugh on his lips that he wanted to learn into immediately, his heart lurching forward as Sora twined his arms around his neck, careful and soft, and kissed him.

Riku curled over, went to him willingly like a heavy bough to a lake, trailing his shoulders behind him.

It was _ warmer _ than he remembered, an entire flock of butterflies wintering in his stomach took flight at once as Sora’s lips nudged his open slowly, encouraged him to slot them between his own until he sighed against Sora's mouth and pressed the slightest bit closer.

He was so _ careful _ not to touch him too much — there were inches between them, between Riku’s hands gripping the bark behind him for dear life and Sora carefully angling everywhere but his head away. There was _ space _ that Riku was forced to consider as Sora pulled back enough to read his face, his fingers playing just under the metal clasp of Riku’s cross necklace in a way that made his very _ spine _ tingle the entire way down. 

If this was his sin — the first steps into an ocean of it — Riku figured he may as well drown. Cling to Sora like a life raft in a flood, and cling he did, and he chased Sora’s lips back down.

As he thought it, he realized his hands had settled themselves against Sora’s waist in the lightest touch possible, more fabric than anything, and he felt Sora draw back to release a shuddery exhale.

Riku wanted to hear it again.

“This isn’t a sin,” Sora murmured. The thought was suddenly so _ far _ from his mind he struggled to understand what he was even talking about. “I just wanted to say that.”

Riku moved to respond, to deny it — but Sora wrapped his arms around him once more, and he melted into the touch. He hadn’t realized he was close to sobbing, the feeling in him jittery and ecstatic, the way he would feel when the cathedral lit up with the first chords of _ joy to the world _ and _ hark the herald angels sing _, the joyous sound of hundreds of voices joined as one.

He was sure. He was _ so _ sure.

“You’re not either,” Sora said to his shoulder, turning to fan his warm breath across his throat. “You’re just Riku. And whatever you are, you’re _ perfect _.”

So many people had called him perfect in his life — used it like a weapon to threaten and maim, or used it like a silent, sinking poison when he had least expected it, or thrown it at his back, pierced him with it like a spear. _ But never once had it been used like this. _

He was right. The longer he held Sora, the harder it was to hold the teachings in his mind. It had been so long since anyone had hugged him — hugged him like they really _ loved _ him, like he was _ seen _. 

It was...more than a book had ever done.

He did cry, in the end — fell so heavy on Sora that they slid down the trunk as the tears slid down his face and he perched between Sora’s knees as he buried his fists and his face in the soft fabric of his top, Sora humming things that sounded like hymns themselves into his ear for a long time after.

————

It was two months, fifteen _ very detailed _text messages to Naminé, and twenty-seven kisses later.

Riku was leaning against the _ tree again — their _tree it had become, because of what had happened around it — a book that was not the Bible spread open in his lap, scanning without really seeing. It was a warm early Summer day, the air was fresh with dew, and one of Sora’s moms’ voices was filtering out into the backyard through the open window as he laughed with her, the octaves rising and falling like gentle waves.

Riku felt more at peace than he had in months.

There were so many things to get used to and at the same time, nothing at all. Sora was just as affectionate; the main difference being Riku knew what was _ behind _ it, now. Knew what was behind his own feelings, too — the mindless way he would lean into Sora’s shoulder given new context and a new, answering flutter in his chest.

_ Gay _ stopped being a formless shadow behind him, and started being something...not _ comfortable _, yet but. Warm. Like a set of hand-me-down clothes he had been gifted that, eventually, he was sure he would grow into. 

The promise of it became...less of a death sentence, and more like a dream, because the way he happened to be born allowed him to be here, in this moment, with Sora — loving _ Sora _ as _ much _ as he could with his sadly mortal heart, given the gift of Sora’s affection back. If that wasn’t divine providence — and Riku believed in a just and fair universe that way, that was the _ point _ of God — then he wasn’t sure what was.

In this moment, in the arms of the warm breeze and the soft drift of feeling, he couldn’t think of _ hateful _ things. He thought instead of _ Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. _

There was something small and warm and protective in Sora’s house, something that felt _ right _. When he slept over, the way Sora would fly past his mom, grabbing his school lunch and kissing her in the same movement as he rushed by, only to skid back at her call of “Sora! Make sure to grab one for your boyfriend, too!” The easy words would twist something unnamable in his chest, something shaky and buoyant and full of helium.

They would open their matching sandwiches when they met up for lunch with Sora’s sizable friend group, Riku and Naminé in their plaid uniforms sticking out like sore thumbs in the public school’s yard. Sora’s sandwich was already divested of the crusts, which had been stealthily stuck in Riku’s bag when he wasn’t looking, as if by magic. They would sneak looks at each other as Roxas and Hayner regaled them with their latest adventures. Sora’s secret smile as he touched his hand under the table was incandescent.

_ Boyfriend _. 

It was harder to _ panic _ , to picture himself surrounded in a room with a cacophony of voices shouting over each other, when he was surrounded with so much _ love _. The whole of Sora’s house held it, from Sora’s carefully framed and matted adoption certificate, in a place of honor above the mantle crowded with crystals and statues, to the living room full of mismatched, slouchy couches good for lying on and too many leafy potted herbs, to a fridge crowded with so many family vacation photos and novelty magnets it was hard to open without disrupting all of it. Always three beaming people with matching faces and their arms slung around each other on a variety of landscapes.

He learned things about Sora, too: that he called his mother ‘mom squared’, but never to her face, while _ mom _ was simply that; that he liked to curl his fingers under the edge of the sleeve of whatever jacket Riku was wearing, just to touch his wrist; that he never had patience for anything except, apparently, Riku.

He must have accidentally drifted off, because he woke up to a sore neck and two bright blue eyes framed with thick lashes, upside down, and _ way _ too close to his face.

He startled so badly he knocked their foreheads together, which sent Sora reeling backwards dramatically.

“Riku!” Sora hissed, clutching at his head. “You’ve wounded me!”

“Jesus!” Riku exclaimed. The word had slipped out before he could stop it as he clutched at his heart. “W-what the hell were you doing?”

“Surprising you, obviously! Aren’t you not _ allowed _ to say that, or something?” Sora’s eye peeked out at him from between his fingers.

Trust Sora to remember _ that _ rule and literally nothing else. Riku had earnestly tried, too, but Sora’s mind was a sieve for anything that felt too much like a _ rule _. Riku envied that, too.

“I think He’ll understand, since you almost just _ sent _ me to Him!” Riku hissed, rubbing circles into his throbbing forehead. 

“That would have been a _ really _ funny way to die, you have to admit. If I was God I’d definitely have laughed at you.”

For a brief moment, Riku actually pictured Sora _ as _ God, or a comically stereotypical version out of one of the books they used to teach the younger kids in Sunday school: Sora in a comically large toga and strappy sandals, sporting an impressively dull silver beard and a stern brow over it all. The mental image had him in breathless laughter before he could even finish the thought.

“What are you giggling about?” Sora had his hands on his hips, pouting at being left out of a joke.

“Sora,” he said, still grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m _ really _ glad you’re not God.”

“Huh?”

“You definitely wouldn’t look half as cute with a beard.” Covering the freckles would have been criminal, for a start.

“I think I would look _ distinguished _,” he said, puffing his chest out comically until Riku poked him in the sternum. Sora caught his hand.

“That’s _ one _ way to put it,” Riku joked, ruffling his hair. Sora batted his hands away automatically.

“I was _ trying _ to be cute and surprise you, but then you were asleep and then you weren’t,” Sora explained, gesturing all the while. “Why can’t I _ ever _ surprise you, Riku? Honestly. Wait. Are _ you _ the psychic one?”

Another Sora fact: he rambled when he was really flustered, and it was just so easy to _ do _ it.

“You surprise me all the time,” Riku said seriously. “And you’re always cute.”

“Ahh! _ Riku _ ,” Sora moaned, stepping forward to bury his face in Riku's chest. “I’m never gonna get _ used _ to that.”

It was getting _ easier _ to joke about it, too — long conversations until the early hours, the both of them sliding so close they were intertwined, speaking in whispers about how much they felt and how long they’d felt it. Sora helped him take his own feelings apart and examine them, like stepping away from a very complex painting to finally, finally see what the artist intended from a distance, to see the masterpiece of its creation.

“What? Being cute?”

Sora playfully slapped his shoulder. “Stop that, you big sap.”

“Never.” Once he had uncorked whatever bottle had been he had stoppered for his entire life, he just kept _ needing _ to tell Sora things like that constantly.

“Anyway. Here. Let me see your head.”

“No way,” Sora said, drawing back dramatically, his hand coming up cover his forehead. “You’ve lost my trust.”

Riku rolled his eyes. “That’s a shame. I was going to make it up to you, but if you insist…”

“_ Okay _,” Sora said with an exaggerated sigh. “But we do it my way.”

“Which is?”

Sora sandwiched himself between Riku and the tree to begin pushing at his shoulders from behind, and Riku leaned the smallest bit forward in response.

“Yes, Sora?”

Sora grunted and kept pushing until he had wedged a foot between Riku’s legs and the bark, using the leverage to started peeling him away.

“Sora, you can use your words,” Riku said, quirking a brow. Sora only pushed harder in response, and Riku wondered why Sora was so weirdly _ endearing _ all the time. He got the hint and stepped forward, finally, and Sora half-pulled him and half-slid down the tree to slot himself between Riku and the bark with his legs bent on either side of Riku’s torso, with Riku between his legs, his back pressed to Sora’s chest

“There,” Sora panted. “_ God _, you’re heavy.”

“If you wanted to cuddle, you could’ve just asked,” Riku said. Sora was like a furnace all the time, which was why he was firmly allergic to anything but shorts, and the curve of his chest was pleasant against his back.

Sora huffed. “Where’s the fun in that, Riku?”

Riku leaned back until his weight was on Sora, his head lolling back to his shoulder lazily, Sora’s eyes barely in his vision. “Yeah, but now you’re trapped.”

“No, _ you’re _ trapped,” Sora shot back and squeezed his sides tightly with his legs.

“Oh no,” Riku chuckled, grabbing his ankles with his hands until Sora squirmed. “Not your _ dreaded _ knobby knees. I’m in _ real _ danger.”

“You know you are,” Sora laughed, and he slung his arms loosely around Riku’s neck. The sound reverberated through his chest, the feeling like a pleasant buzz. “My pointy elbows, too.”

“Oh _ no _ , _ whatever _ shall I do?” Riku mused, before grabbing Sora’s wrists to pull him flush against his back. 

Sora leaned forward and hooked his arms around to clasp over Riku’s heart — the pressure across his shoulders felt divine — and laughed in the deepest voice he had right into Riku’s ear. It reminded him a little of Naminé. He really _ had _ to introduce them properly. “Foolish mortal. Now you’ve fallen into my _ real _ trap!”

“And what’s that?”

“This.”

Sora leaned over to brush his lips across Riku’s cheekbone, dry and feather-light. When he pulled back, he was smiling, and Riku had twisted around to kiss that smile before he even had time to think about it.

Sora had initiated every single one of their previous twenty-seven kisses, always unconsciously hovering before they touched, as if to give Riku a chance to change his mind. He never did, but it made Riku’s heart clench every time.

Riku stole the twenty-eighth.

It was so simple to do it: there was, finally, glorious _ silence _ in his mind, in his heart, everything focused on Sora, the warmth of his skin and the smell of the grass and the curl of his lips and the swelling, bursting feeling in his chest.

Riku tried to pull away, but Sora just laughed, his eyes sparkling, and pulled him forward until they were both covered in grass stains and each other.

————

“Do you know what today is?”

It was another lazy, golden afternoon, but their script had been flipped from the usual. This time, the sun spilled blue through Sora's curtains and over the myriad of Sora's Struggle posters, with the both of them entwined on the covers.. They were sharing the bedspread with the majority of Sora’s comic collection, thrown haphazardly in piles, which he was _ supposed _ to have been sorting before lying on Riku had suddenly seemed more appealing.

His moms were at some teacher conference, so they were left to fend for themselves over the weekend. “Eat something other than just chips!” said the cheery yellow note on the door to the pantry, with a secondary “We _ WILL _ find out, Sora!” scribbled underneath, and Riku nearly teared up at how small and loving a gesture it was. He was doing that a lot more, these days, smiling easier and feeling more without the constant, secondary bite of _ doubt. _

Riku was half-heartedly trying to read a small Greek mythology book held above his head in one hand to free his other hand for more important matters.

“Is it Friday?” he asked, and he rested his head on Sora’s, which was pillowed in his chest. Riku's hand was mindlessly carding Sora's hair back, away from his forehead as he ran his fingers through it and along his scalp. Sora’s eyes were flickering as Riku lulled him to sleep.

“Yeah, but It’s _ also _ our three month anniversary.”

“Three and a half,” Riku responded automatically, then realized what he had said and felt his own ears turn red. His hand stilled, and he lowered the book a little. He considered wearing it, just to spare him the embarrassment.

“I knew it!” Sora crowed, raising on an elbow to grin at him. “You _ were _ counting!”

“Maybe,” he said, _ horribly _conscious of the pink across his nose. He had to avert his eyes.

“So you _ do _ like me,” Sora said, looking up at him with eyes so full of mirth that Riku had to press a quick kiss to his cheek.

“Oh, no,” Riku deadpanned, feeling as sappy as he probably _ looked _. “Who told you?”

“You didn’t have to. I just knew,” Sora said fondly. He then lowered his head to resume his previous position of playing a game on his gummiphone, his one arm twined with Riku’s. 

“At least one of us did,” Riku said quietly.

Maybe it was _ because _ of Sora that he was able to be here, curled around another boy without even _ thinking _ about it, _ allowing _ himself to run his free hand up and down Sora’s back, or _ allowing _ Sora’s fingers playing with his hands, pressing on each of his fingers in turn. But then again, dating Sora wasn’t _ that _different than being best friends with him. It was like...a softly sloping hill. A little scary if you looked down, but so subtle and easy you didn’t notice you were at the bottom until it happened. And Sora, always so patient with him, always willing to back off or back down if he needed to retreat into himself for a while.

Riku really was _ blessed _. He wasn’t sure he deserved someone as good as Sora in his life.

Naminé, too, he reminded himself. These days, she and Xion were busying themselves forming an LGBT subset of their youth group, while Riku and Sora's entire friend group lent a hand or a voice wherever possible, religious or not.

It was...important. Something about it felt significant, felt _ right. _Every day he felt closer to saying something to his parents, but for now, this was enough. The truth was within these walls, and it was fine, for now.

“Hey. I know I haven’t...really said it yet, but I’m proud of you,” Sora said quietly, so Riku almost didn’t hear it. “Really, _ really _ proud.”

It was hard to swallow around the lump in his throat. Sora always surprised him with how easily he could just..._ say _ things like that, exactly what Riku wanted to hear. He buried his face in Sora’s shoulder.

“Uh oh,” Sora laughed. “Hey, don’t hide from me.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I just…”

“I know,” Sora said. “You’re just Riku.”

_ Yeah _ , he thought. _ That’s _ why he loved Sora. He _ let _ him be _ just Riku. _

_ I love you _, he thought, so fiercely it took him by surprise. His hand stilled.

“You okay?” Sora asked, tipping his head back to stare at Riku with one too-big eye. He snorted at the sight.

“Yeah,” Riku said. “Just being sappy.”

“Oh _ yeah _? Care to share with the class?” Sora’s grin looked too catlike to be innocent, and Riku rolled his eyes again.

“Never. The secret dies with me.”

“Lame!” Sora huffed, falling back down on Riku’s ribs, which forced some of the air out of him. The things he did for love, really.

“Hey. Riku.”

“Yes, Sora?” All pretense of reading gone, Riku sighed and stretched to place the book and his reading glasses on the bedside table.

“Will you read it to me again? The passage about love?”

_ “ _No way. Not with you looking at me like that.”

“I always look at you like this,” Sora said, cocking his head to the side. “What’s so different about it?”

_ Now I know what it means, _ he thought. _ Now I know I look at you the same way. _

It was soft, and kind of dopey, maybe a little melty at the edges — like cotton candy, something sugar-sweet that would dissolve if you tried to hold it, but was sweet in its own way. He was sure he looked just the same.

Without thinking, he had reached out a hand to trace Sora’s cheek, and Sora leaned into it with a soft sigh, always encouraging, always rewarding.

“Sorry,” he said out loud. “That was a special one-time-only performance.”

“Riku!” Sora’s eyes snapped back to attention as he fixed him with his best attempt at a glare.

“No can do,” he said, already smiling as Sora’s face darkened. “It won’t ever be as good as the first time.”

“Why’s that?”

He felt himself going red just thinking it — he always blushed so easily, he was learning, he never had occasion to notice _ that _ , before — nd Sora always told him how _ cute _ it was. He had to clear his throat around his next comment.

“W-Well. You kissed me the first time.”

Sora leaned forward, his elbows poking into Riku’s chest as he pressed down. Riku’s eyes snapped involuntarily to his lips. “So I’ll kiss you again this time, and it’ll _ totally _ be better.”

His mouth felt suddenly dry.

Riku made a show of considering it, rubbing his chin and all. “Well...You do drive a hard bargain. But...I _ do _ have to get up to get it.”

Sora released an extremely put-upon sigh before rolling off of him, taking his furnace-like warmth with him and leaving the cold air behind. “If you _ have to _.”

Riku got up to rifle through his bookbag, which was half Sora’s stuff and half his own these days from the frequency of their sleepovers, to retrieve his travel Bible.

“Okay. Just...close your eyes and keep them closed,” Riku said, pressing his palm over Sora’s right eye as he (predictably) tried to crack it open, and he had to roll his eyes. “_ Sora _.”

“Fine,” Sora huffed. “You’re no fun.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. _ Closed _, Sora.”

Sora stuck his tongue out at him, and Riku had to fight the irrational, ridiculous urge to grab it. How old was he, honestly? Sora made him feel five years old, sometimes.

He settled on the edge of the bed, Sora’s hand immediately crawling across the covers blindly to find his in a gesture that sent jittery butterflies to his stomach, even after all these months. Sora waited for him, sitting up, eyes shut comically tight as his face scrunched up, pulling his freckles upwards around his eyes.

Riku traced the bookmark, ran his fingers over the gilded pages like a hello, then cracked it open, and began to read. He cleared his throat twice, just to be sure.

“Love is patient. Love is kind…”

He read, and he let his mind wander, and he _ let _ himself scan Sora’s face, cataloguing how it went relaxed and softer and wistful as he read the passage, and he felt his heart speed up to match the pulse in Sora’s fingers.

He knew the passage by heart, so she didn’t _ have _ to look down, really. And the thought struck him, suddenly, that the whole passage could have been _ about _ Sora.

This time, by the end, Riku _ let _ himself stare at Sora, at his canary yellow t-shirt with stars that set off his brown skin, at the graceful dip of his collarbones beneath and the soft hair curling around his ears, at the line of his mouth curved up into a smile, parting to begin to say Riku’s name, and at his eyes, slivers of brilliant blue expanding by the second.

Riku had leaned in to kiss him before he had made the decision, his gentle hand on Sora’s jaw aiding to tilt that smile up to meet his own, Riku pressing forward and Sora grasping his forearms to catch his balance as they met.

“See,” Sora said, drawing back, like it had been _ his _ idea. “I _ told _you it would be better.”

“Guess you were right,” Riku said, leaning up to kiss his forehead. He made to pull away, but Sora's eyes were dark and serious, his hands tugging a bit on Riku’s arms until he stopped.

He was about to ask what was wrong when Sora kissed him again, tugging him down in the process.

Riku had to break the kiss to avoid knocking their teeth together, but Sora’s arms snaked around his back and tugged him closer. He couldn’t help feeling like _ this _ was how it should have gone the first time, in a perfect world where memories could be rewritten with do-overs and second chances. _ All the same, it was enough. _

“Hold on,” he said, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere.” He took the time to adjust his arms, so they weren’t taking all his weight and protesting the more he leaned over.

“You better not be,” Sora said.

Sora softened against him as Riku leaned over him, legs on either side of Sora’s thighs. He felt giddy and breathless as he leaned down in a way that somehow hadn’t ceased, no matter how many times he anticipated a kiss.

This was _ new _ each and every time.

It made him feel out of control; wild in the ways it felt to be a kid again, when he was chasing freedom without rules — he thought of chains again, stories like links, and some part of him let another piece of it fall away.

“Riku,” Sora huffed, because he had done it again — retreated into his thoughts instead of Sora, who had tangled his arms around his neck in a shadow of the first time, and had leaned up to breathe his air. “Where did you go?” He asked, his voice a quiet question, eyes bright and curious as always.

“Nowhere important,” he said quietly. He leaned forward an inch to catch his eyes. “I’m here now.”

Sora knocked their foreheads together. “Good, because I’m _ very _ interesting,” he said, and ran his hands around to the front of Riku’s collar to tug.

Riku leaned down to kiss him before his ego got any bigger.

Sora made a soft sound against his lips, and Riku felt his hands tighten against his chest, like Sora was keeping him here in every way he could, keeping him away from the traps in his mind that would spring at times he least expected it, tinge the things he did in love with something dark and guilty.

He felt Sora’s tongue trace warm and gentle across his mouth, and it was a familiar question Sora had been asking him for months, but something felt different and charged about this time. His heart was hammering in his throat and his arms were shaking as they held him above Sora, Sora’s legs tight on the sides of his hips, and his heart yearning for new things to replace the chain links with.

He opened himself to Sora, and it felt like _ the easiest thing in the world _ to meet Sora’s tongue with his own, to gasp around the feeling of sparks and more more more and _ why did he ever deny himself this? _ He would _ drown _ in Sora before he resurfaced, he would sink into him forever and never see the sun again because he was right next to it, he _ would—he would suffocate because he had stopped breathing. _

_ Oops _.

He broke the kiss with a gasp. Sora was breathing just as hard by the sound of it, and Riku was certain he was flushed down to his chest and the feelings rattling around in his chest were somehow stronger. He had never had wine besides a few sips in church, and one time Naminé had flinched a bottle from her dad’s cabinet, but it felt nothing like _ this _. He dropped his head to bury it in Sora’s shoulder and shook with it all, without any way to condense it into words.

“Riku,” Sora laughed, still panting. “That tickles.”

“You scare me sometimes,” Riku said, barely above a whisper. 

“Why? Not like I have phenomenal cosmic powers or anything.”

“Sometimes I think you do.”

“Did they only kick in when I turned sixteen, or something? Is that why it took you _ forever _to notice I liked you?”

Riku snorted. “Where did you learn sarcasm?”

“You. You’re corrupting my innocence,” Sora sighed. “My family will never approve.”

“_ Your _ family loves me more than my family does, so I don’t see that being an issue.”

Sora’s hand shot up to cover his mouth, and Riku shook with laughter.

“Stop using your _ logic _ on me.”

“I really don’t know if I can,” he said around Sora’s palm.

“_Fine_, you got me. Here’s the catch.” He dragged his hands down his own face to contort it into something he probably thought was scary, but all it did was send Riku into a fit of helpless laughter. “I’m _so_ _scary_ I turn people to stone! It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened to you yet.”

Riku stiffened against him, letting every limb go heavy. “Oh no,” he said flatly. “I suddenly feel heavier...”

“Riku!” Sora protested as he took his weight, but he was laughing too much to sound properly affronted. “Get _ off _! You’re crushing me!” 

“Should have thought about that before you made me a statue,” he said, melting even further into Sora’s body.

In one fluid motion — Riku blamed Sora’s field hockey team for that one — he had hooked both legs around Riku’s hips and flipped them, and Riku was suddenly blinking up at the ceiling. He didn’t have a chance to reorient himself as Sora wrapped all his limbs around him at once, planting his face into his chest. It couldn’t have been comfortable, what with his buttons, but Sora just pressed his face even closer.

“Sora,” he laughed. “What are you doing?”

“You make a handsome statue,” Sora muttered.

He tried to wriggle out from the hold for a moment — the vice of his arms around his ribcage was making it even harder to get air into his lungs — before giving up to wrap his arms around his narrow shoulders. “Forget Medusa. I think you’re just a monkey.”

“Nah,” Sora whispered, his hands fisting in Riku’s shirt, skirting his shoulder blades. “Just love you.”

There it was. _ Just like that. _

They had gotten _ close _ to this before, but Sora had always stopped himself. Riku felt it, because he had learned _ everything _ Sora, the minute flash of fear in his face before he changed the subject or laughed it off; like he wasn’t sure if _ voicing it _would be finally be the thing to send Riku running for the hills.

Maybe It would have, a few short months ago. 

They had really come _ so far. _

_ He had come so far. _

Now, he felt Sora freeze against him for long seconds without even daring to breathe. “I-I didn’t mean…” he stopped himself. Sora never did things he didn’t mean.

The words settled in Riku's gut and left him breathless, helpless to do anything but pull Sora tighter and shut his eyes against the rush of warmth in his veins. The boy in his arms was shaking, or maybe he was shaking, and he _ loved _ him, yes — fiercely, like he would gladly protect him from all harm, like he wanted to shield him from all the evils of the world — as fiercely as he loved the sunrise, as he loved first snows and the feeling of being the only one in a library. 

He pulled Sora so tight against him it was hard to breathe, but Sora seemed to be waiting for an answer, and Riku _ wanted _ to give one, felt it pushing up and out of his chest — and finally, he had one to give. 

“Sora. It’s okay,” He told him, because _ of course it was. _“I love you too,” he said, though his voice broke a few times on the attempt. 

Sora sniffed against his skin.

“Yeah?” Sora asked, pulling back to look up at him, as if to assure himself this was really happening. “For real?”

His lower lip was trembling, and Riku badly wanted it between his so it would stop. 

“Yeah,” Riku said, his head buzzing pleasantly where it was pressed against Sora, like it did when the Christmas mass incense grew too thick; a heavy, pleasant, slowly coalescing joy. “For real.”

Sora looked like he was going to cry — his nose tended to scrunch up first, and then he would sniff, and big, wet tears would descend down the valley of his throat — so Riku leaned up to cup hands around his cheeks, thumbs skirting his cheekbones. “Hey,” he said. “This is a no crying zone.” Riku pulled him down to press their foreheads together, suddenly needing to be _ closer. _

“Shut up, Riku,” Sora sniffed with tears in his eyes, and he kissed him again. It was a little salty, but it was the slowest, softest kiss Riku had ever had. “I’m just _ happy _.”

“Me too,” Riku said, and it was okay, because he might have been crying, too.

He figured kiss-fifty seven would be his favorite for a long time, even though it tasted like happy tears.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic actually comes from the final line of the passage Riku reads (I omitted it for fic purposes), which is from 1 Corinthians 13. The line is as follows:
> 
> 'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.' Meaning: of all the deep-reaching faith and esoteric gifts in the world, it's all useless and empty without love at its core.
> 
> I wanted, ultimately, to tell a story about hope and faith growing WITH someone as they become themselves. I hope that I succeeded :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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